Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,90
then she came along and it was let’s just chill, Ry, we can do other stuff every now and again, are these photos really going to be that great anyway. So yeah, I figured out a way to get content. Because I don’t abandon shit that matters to me.”
“Don’t say ‘get content’ like that. You didn’t get content. You took it. You took me and turned me into content.”
This is it. This is it this is it this is it. Lulu’s hands are shaking. This is the clearest admission of guilt she’ll ever get from him.
This is how she reminds him that other people can see him too.
“Sure,” Ryan says. “It wasn’t, like, ethical. I should have told you about the cameras, especially in the rooms. I should have told you about the pictures before I showed them. But really, Cass, look at who you’re dating. You think she’s not gonna do something like this to you, someday? You think Lulu Shapiro is going to keep your secrets?”
“Don’t talk about her. This isn’t about her.”
“You’re fucking stupid to trust her. She’s not even interesting, Cass. She’s not who you think she is.”
“I don’t forgive you,” Cass says. “I never will.”
Lulu’s thumb presses down once, hard, on the END RECORD button.
They look up when she comes through the pool gate. They’re both crying, Cass quietly and Ryan miserably, determinedly, like even still he needs them both to see, to know, to witness him. Like they’ve done something to him. Like any of this is either of their faults.
“Go away,” he says.
“Cass,” Lulu says quietly. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Cass says. “I’m ready.”
Ryan’s temper flares. “Do you want to make me your enemy?” he asks. “Do you really think that’s smart?”
“I don’t care if it’s smart or not,” Cass says. “Fuck you, Ryan.”
“You were always our enemy,” Lulu says. “I guess I should say thank you for making sure we’d never forget it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LULU DRIVES THEM home. She doesn’t put on her GPS or ask Cass for directions. She just drives: down the hill, into the hum of the city, through sleepy weekend traffic. Cass stares blankly out the passenger-side window.
Lulu feels like a kid again, like she’s in her dad’s car on her way to the airport on the first day of vacation. Like the rest of the world is still cogging its way along, and she alone has been cut free—suspended, dangling. Suddenly loose and light.
She has power now. Not much—not enough—not anything that will make any big, real difference in the world. She can’t make Ryan take back what he did. But she can make it harder for him to do it to another girl.
She knows what she wants to do. For herself. For everyone else.
Lulu drives them to her house, where Cass picked her up just a few hours ago. It feels like it’s been days. She turns the car off but can’t make herself get out.
“You can come in, if you want to,” she says.
Silence.
“Not like—I’m not trying to start anything,” she clarifies. “Like, if you want to drink a glass of water before you head back. Take a nap. I won’t even walk you up to my room.”
Cass says, “I should probably go. I’m kind of exhausted.”
Lulu remembers the last time Cass came over to see her, at her mom’s apartment, the first day after they’d kissed. What happened; what it meant to her. To both of them. That first night at Cass’s they’d opened a door together; at Lulu’s the next day it was like they stepped through it and into the same room. Oh, Lulu remembers thinking, this is happening.
She can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to have something like Ryan happen to you: to know that no matter what you do or say, someone is going to take the presence of your body in the world as an invitation to do what he wants with it, and then blame you if you tell him you don’t like it. At least when he did it to Lulu, he didn’t pretend it was because he loved her.
“Okay,” Lulu says.
Cass yawns then, a huge, face-cracking thing that moves through her whole body. “Okay,” she says. “Maybe actually I could come lie down for a minute. Will I be able to find your room without you?”
Lulu laughs. “This isn’t Patrick’s batshit maze mansion,” she says. “Through the front door, up the stairs, second door on your left. You can put whatever’s on the bed on the floor.”
“I